The industrial field of this disclosure relates to wired and wireless communications and in particular to the Insteon® network. The Insteon network and protocol are disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 8,081,649. In general, an Insteon system is able to propagate radio frequency (RF) and power line transmissions over extended distances at relatively low power. Such a network consists of a number of spatially separated transceiver devices and processor based software protocols requiring each device to retransmit a received transmission, usually more than once. The retransmissions are simultaneously sent out by all devices that have received the original transmission. In this manner, an original transmission is able to propagate by hops from one device to the next so that a distant device, although not able to receive the original transmission may be able to receive a retransmission. When the number of retransmissions is more than one, the probability of the most distant device receiving a message is increased so that with a large network operating with multiple retransmissions, even the most distant device may be able to receive the originally transmitted message. However, because of RF transmission interference, low transmission power, power line noise, power line phase incompatibilities and other problems there is a need for improved methods to assure full transmission reception over the entire network.
The complexity of a mesh network of devices is significantly reduced based on distributed intelligence allowing all devices to simultaneously respond to a generic input with each executing a unique or specific local response. Other networks use a series of specific commands each directed to a particular device from a central controller. This limits scalability of the network due to eventual delays as the network increases in size.